Italy! (Day Seven) VENICE!

Today we left Tuscany, taking a bullet train (First Class!) from Florence to Venice!  What a trip!  We were zipping along at 180 miles/hour!  Yet it didn't feel like it because it was perfectly smooth.  Someone in our group commented, "I really thought this would go faster" because it was so smooth.  Then we looked up where the current speed was posted, and it was 180 miles/hr!  We had lunch on the train.

Stepping out of the train and out into Venice was AMAZING!  I couldn't believe I was actually there!  In Venice!!

 We met up with the gondolier's who would be transporting us over to where we would begin our walking tour.  Gondola's.  Awesome!

You can see the famous "Rialto Bridge" here...

This was our local guide here in Venice.  She was born here and has lived here her entire life.  She was SO fun to listen to.  She was a fabulous teacher too.  Here she is talking about Venice's famous Carnaval and all the masks.  Particularly, she is discussing the significance of the funny mask with the long nose.  It originated during the time of the Plague, when doctor's would wear this, thinking they were protecting themselves from their sick patients (they weren't).

She had us look at this tower and explained that Venice is sinking at the rate of 8 inches every 100 years!  Since it is sinking unevenly, you get buildings that look like this...

This guy dressed up like Marco Polo to talk to our Disney group.  At the end, his treasure box was full of our Disney pins for the day commemorating Venice!  Cute!

Now we arrived at the famous St Mark's Square!  I have always wanted to come here and now we were here!  We now got to go on a tour of St Mark's Cathedral, where St Mark's tomb is.  Again, with a little "Disney magic", we got to walk right past all the crowds waiting to go inside...

All the art you see are mosaics - tons of little tiles - not paintings.  The gold is 24 karat gold leafing.

Here you can see St Mark's tomb...

The Doge's palace...

The Rialto Bridge is famous because it used to be the only way in Venice to cross the Grand Canal.  Now there are other bridges too.

The top of St Mark's Cathedral as the sun was setting...

 Now we headed into our hotel.  We were so lucky to be staying right there at St Mark's Square at the Luna Hotel Baglioni!  BEAUTIFUL, MAGNIFICENT hotel!